04x11 - When Hell Freezes Over

[bunniefuu]

So come on in.

Ooh!

Welcome.

The house had to work.

I had too much to lose.

Kristel, there's something going on in there.

It just didn't feel right.

I'm just a little bit worried.

I thought you should see this.

If this was her vision of our house...

[Muffled screaming]

What was she seeing?

Monster eyes!

Is that a bee?

It was almost biblical.

[expl*si*n]

Could this all be, like, a curse...

[Shouts]

From an angry preacher?

[Screams]

Back in 1997, I was not in a great place.

I had just ended a four-year relationship, and my grandmother had recently passed away, and we'd had our childhood home sold out from under us.

My daughter, Taylor, and I really needed to find a place to live, but finding housing on a single wage was pretty tough.

I have a younger sister, Kerrie, and she was in a bad situation herself.

I was in a fairly bad relationship, and I needed to get out of there fast.

Like Kristel, I needed a place to live.

Hey, Taylor.

Yeah?

High-five.

Yeah.

[Laughs] Do you want to play Patty-cake?

I met dawn in school, and we hit it off right away.

She was funny, and she made me laugh.

♪ Eat the cake ♪

Today!

Yay!

Dawn would come to our home pretty much every weekend.

So she sort of was a part of the extended family.

Dawn was also experiencing a breakup in her relationship and was in a similar place.

And then Kerrie had a brainwave.

I said to Kristel, "Why don't we live together? Let's find a place. Let's find a great home."

We all decided we'd had enough of the bad relationships, poor decisions, bad luck, whatever it was.

We could choose to make a better life for ourselves.

The house was absolutely beautiful.

Hi.

I'm Kerrie. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

Beautiful, sprawling house.

Having my sister there and having dawn there to be part of my daughter's life as well, was very attractive to me.

Look at that Ivy.

[Gasps]

For the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful.

All right, so come on in.

Ooh!

Welcome.

There was just so much room.

Isn't it beautiful? [Chuckles]

Plenty of room for all of you here.

Just a lovely family home.

Nice, tall ceilings here. Mommy, can I go upstairs?

Sure, hon.

Of course, original hardwood.

My daughter and I had been living in such a cramped space that it felt like we could stretch out and we could breathe.

So come on in here.

Now, if you come around this way...

As we walked through the house, we kept looking at each other like, "this house is too nice."

We noticed this enormous stone wall that was running in the hallway.

The wall looked a little bit out of place.

It was cold.

It looked like that wall at one time had been on the outside.

Now, down the hall is the kitchen, but if you want to just come with me, let's go upstairs...

We were feeling really optimistic and overjoyed about starting our life over in this wonderful, new house.

We said right away, "yes, we'll take it."

Moving day was crazy.

Around 2:00 in the morning, we still had half the truck to unload, and we didn't have any energy left.

So we decided to just get some rest and take our time with unpacking and moving that stuff in the house later.

I felt really enthusiastic about the future and what it was gonna bring for us.

[Water drips]

[Low creaking]

[Child giggling]

In the middle of the night...

[Child giggles]

I was jolted awake by the sound of a child giggling.

[Giggling]

And footsteps in the hallway.

[Giggling]

Taylor, honey, I know you're excited, but you got to get some sleep, okay?

Come on back up to bed.

And as soon as I said that...

Mommy, I'm here.

[Gasps]

What the hell? You know?

Oh, okay. All right, honey.

You just go back to bed, okay? Okay.

Okay. I'll see you in the morning.

Okay, go back to sleep.

[Wood creaking]

And then I heard another creak, and it was clear, and it was loud, and there was no mistaking it.

[Wood creaking]

I saw a shadow, and it looked like somebody was walking in the hallway.

[Creaking]

And I was nervous, but I kept checking, and I went around the corner past the stone wall.

Immediately, I was struck by this cold.

[Shivering]

[Footsteps]

And I can hear somebody's footsteps behind me.

[Footsteps]

[Air rushing]

Then I felt somebody exhaling, like, right behind my ear.

I was just like, "okay, this is my imagination.

There's nothing there."

[Bells tolling]

There was this lethargy that settled on us, and it was something beyond the exhaustion of the move.

[Water running]

We unpacked our clothes and the things that we needed immediately.

We never did get around to unpacking the boxes.

The light and the warmth that had been so inviting about the house didn't seem to be there anymore.

It was impossible not to notice.

There had been a significant shift in the energy of the house.

[Water running]

It just didn't feel right.

[Frost crackling]

Kerrie, it's freezing in here.

I know. Here, have some coffee.

Oh, thank you so much.

I'm gonna check on the fire.

It was always cold inside, which was unusual because it was only September.

It's like a refrigerator in here.

Ah.

Is that working?

No.

Kerrie went and turned the thermostat up to 85.

And it made no difference at all.

[Tones beeping]

So I called the landlord.

Uh, yeah, hello. Hi.

This is Kerrie. Yeah, the tenant.

Um, listen, it's freezing in here.

It was especially cold by the hallway where the stone wall was.

The repairman comes and looks at the furnace.

He fills our t*nk with $500 worth of propane.

This should get you by more than a couple of months.

Okay. Thanks.

That's good.

We felt, "okay, we're gonna be fine for a while."

[Flames surge, door squeaks]

[Fire crackling]

[Clock ticking]

[Frost crackling]

[Bells tolling]

[Frost crackling]

I woke up the next morning because I was freezing.

This is ridiculous.

And it was colder than the day before.

Mommy, I'm cold.

Oh, honey, come here.

Ooh.

I called the fuel company again and I said, "what's going on here? This house is freezing."

[Sighs] Well, your fuel t*nk was empty.

Empty.

There's no leak in the lines.

There's no reason the fuel should be gone, but it's fine now.

We were just like, "wow, how could this happen?"

Okay, well, how much is this gonna cost me?

$500.

$500?

No.

It was another $500 that we didn't have.

It made no sense.

We knew something was wrong.

It was like the house didn't want to stay warm.

[Frost crackling]

That night, I was exhausted.

And I'd been asleep, maybe an hour when I heard...

[Tapping]

"Tap, tap, tap, tap," on my window.

[Tapping]

And then I had a horrible realization that my bedroom window was 20 feet off the ground and it wasn't possible for anyone to be standing there.

[Wood creaking]

The noise could only be coming from inside the house.

[Frost crackling]

I see a cr*ck, and it slowly sort of made its way across the window.

[Cracking]

My whole body stiffened.

I thought it had to be the temperature that caused the glass to break.

There had to be a rational explanation.

Mommy?

Mommy?

Mommy? Mommy?

The next day, the cr*ck was gone.

Mommy? Are you coming down?

I didn't know what to think of it.

It was weird.

Later that night, I hadn't been in bed for very long, and I was woken up.

[Faint ethereal singing]

It sounded as though there was a choir literally standing in my bedroom.

[Choir harmonizing]

A choir singing Amazing Grace.

[Faint ethereal singing]

I went into the hallway.

Everybody's door shut. Nobody's awake.

[Clock ticking]

[Faint ethereal singing]

The singing continued.

[Ethereal singing]

There were many muffled voices.

It was like a church choir.

[Ethereal choir singing]

It's not coming from inside the house.

Is it coming from outside the house?

[Ethereal choir singing]

So I walked back to my bedroom, and looked out the window, 'cause I'm thinking, "are they standing on the lawn?"

There was nobody there.

Am I going crazy?

Am I hearing things?

[Birds singing]

Taylor, honey, eat your breakfast.

Kerrie came into the dining room, and I noticed that she looked tired and she had bags under her eyes.

Hey, munchkin, you okay?

Taylor had dark circles under her eyes.

Hey, how have you guys been sleeping?

Not very well.

Why do you ask?

I don't know, I've been hearing music.

Have you heard choirs?

It was really hard to admit what was going on, to talk about it.

No. No, I haven't heard anything.

It was probably, like, a car driving by or something.

Maybe it's you dreaming it.

I didn't know what to say.

There really was a weird energy in the house.

We were trying to move away from bad relationships and the challenges we had had.

We were trying to take charge and move forward with our lives.

Maybe we just hadn't dealt with our issues that we had all moved in with.

[Bells tolling]

[Knocking]

I was doing chores when I heard a loud knock on the door.

[Knocking]

I stopped what I was doing and went to the door to answer it...

And no one was there.

[Scraping]

[Bell rings]

A few minutes later, another knock on the door, only this time, they were pounding on the door.

[Loud knocking]

[Knocking continues]

Again, nobody there.

I was getting really mad and really frustrated.

I figured somebody in the neighborhood thought it would be funny to play pranks on the new people, but who could we have offended?

Later that afternoon, I was sitting at my sewing machine...

I don't know where he is.

I don't know.

I haven't seen him in a long time.

I heard my daughter in her room just chatting away.

I really don't know where he is.

And making her toys talk to each other and just doing what kids do.

I really don't know where he is.

And I poked my head in.

I haven't seen him in a long time.

And she was looking up as though she was speaking to somebody in front of her.

She's a good woman.

She's nice and polite and very gentle.

But there was nobody there.

Taylor, honey, who were you talking to?

No one.

No, I just heard you.

Who were you talking to?

No one, mommy.

It was like a conversation I wasn't invited to.

[Keys playing lightly]

Taylor, can you please take your dishes down the to kitchen?

[Dishes clattering]

She just, with venom, was like, "no, you take it into the kitchen."

Taylor.

The look on her face was not the look you see on a six-year-old's face.

[Shouting]

Stop. Just stop.

She threw herself to the floor.

Stop it!

I don't want to!

I'd never seen anything like it, and I was terrified.

Stop it, Taylor! Stop it!

Stop!

I don't want to!

I don't want to!

Stop it.

It seemed like something was changing her personality.

I don't want to! I don't want to!

That night, I was thinking about what was going on with Taylor, and I was getting worried about dawn.

She was sort of retreating into herself.

[Rapid tapping]

Then we had just settled down, and I heard a tapping sound.

A "tap, tap."

[Rattling]

I looked at the window, and I didn't see anything.

[Electricity shorting]

[Low rumbling]

[expl*si*n]

[Gasps]

All of a sudden, we heard "boom."

Oh, my God, the furnace.

Oh, God, Taylor. Taylor!

The floor shook and the windows shook.

Hello?

We have an emergency.

We need a fire truck right away.

It was like a Cannon had just gone off.

Yeah, send it immediately!

I sent the fire chief down to the cellar where the boiler was.

We're good.

Your pilot light went out, and the gas was building underneath.

Gas had been building up in that little space.

It was still pumping through the system, then it just blew.

What... What could have caused that?

You guys are lucky you're not dead.

The furnace blew up.

Hey, baby.

There was no explanation from the fire department.

Help. I'm scared.

It's okay.

Everything's okay now.

I started to ask myself the question, "is something paranormal going on in this house?"

[Ethereal choir singing]

In that moment, we could hear a choir.

Kristel, did you hear that?

I didn't know what to say.

I just didn't want to have a conversation about it.

I didn't want to talk about it.

She was clearly determined to say this wasn't happening.

[Electricity buzzing]

[Low rumbling]

[Loud pop]

[Loud pop]

I sort of felt like I was going mad.

There's something out of this world going on in this house.

[Loud pop]

This was starting to feel dangerous.

[Muffled screaming]

[Screams]

Mommy! Mommy!

Monster eyes! Monster eyes!

[Muffled screaming]

Mommy! Mommy!

I hear this drilling, piercing scream.

[Shrieking]

Taylor.

Taylor, honey, what's wrong?

She's sitting up in bed and pointing at the wall.

I saw monster eyes on my wall.

Monster eyes?

And I looked where she was pointing...

Oh, honey, it's just ponies.

It's just ponies, baby. You're okay.

It's just a drawing. You know?

It... I was really kind of surprised.

But she was inconsolable.

Do you want to come sleep in mommy's room tonight?

She said she wanted to sleep with me.

Oh.

Come on.

Let's go to bed. Okay?

So I brought her in my room to sleep.

Thanks, Kerrie.

Come here.

I didn't want to believe it, and I didn't want to think about it, so I didn't engage.

Kris, listen to me.

Kristel.

There is something going on in there.

There's something not right here.

What is going on?

We just have to get used to the house.

Kristel, are you losing your grip?

Dawn is petrified.

Kristel wouldn't hear about it.

You'd have to be blind and deaf not to see there's something going on here.

There's nothing going on.

[Sniffs]

Admitting that there was something going on meant...

I had to do something, I had to take some kind of action, and that action was to get out.

And I wasn't ready to give up.

I felt like the house was driving a wedge between us.

[Scraping sound]

The next morning, I was trying to get some rest.

I heard a scraping sound.

[Scraping]

So I get up...

And I move very slowly into the hallway.

[Scraping sound]

Each of the dining room chairs was moving all on its own.

Dawn came in the room and saw what I was seeing, and then I hear more scraping, and the other chairs pull themselves away from the table in the same manner.

[Scraping]

And I was in absolute disbelief as to what I was seeing.

There was something going on in our house.

Dawn had had enough.

She said she couldn't take it anymore.

There was no time to even say good-bye.

She was just gone.

Now there were only two of us paying the bills.

We realized we couldn't get on top of our financing until the winter was over, so we couldn't leave.

We were essentially trapped in this situation...

In this house.

Things just became worse very quickly.

Michael looks in the window.

There are all kinds of nice things to eat, [buzzing sound]

Such as little pigs made of marzipan.

He goes inside. Kristel.

Yeah?

Is that a bee?

I thought she had to be mistaken because it was November and there are no bees in November in Vermont.

Oh, my God.

And then there was another.

Oh, God.

[Buzzing]

All of a sudden, there was another bee and another bee.

[Buzzing]

Come here.

It's okay.

The room was filling with bees.

They were everywhere.

Out of thin air.

Oh, my God.

The noise was unbelievable.

[Buzzing]

There was thousands and thousands and thousands of bees.

Taylor!

[Buzzing]

The bees just kept throwing themselves at the glass.

[Buzzing]

We were the target.

[Buzzing]

They were trying to come through the cracks.

[Tape ripping]

So we taped off all the cracks we could find.

You could not even see through the glass enough to see the room.

It was like a plague.

[Buzzing]

[Buzzing]

It was almost biblical.

We called the landlord and he called an exterminator to come out.

We could tell that he was profoundly uncomfortable with what he had seen.

I just don't get it.

He was never able to find where they originated from, why they were there in the middle of the winter.

There was no explanation for it.

The events in the house were starting to take their toll on all of us.

We didn't have any more money, but we had to get out of the house.

My biggest concern was Taylor and the effect the house was having on her.

Hi, honey. How was school?

One afternoon, I went to pick Taylor up from school, and her teacher asked if I had a few minutes.

She wanted to show me a drawing that Taylor had done that day.

Okay, Taylor, honey, go wait for mommy in the car.

Okay? I'll be there in a second.

What can I...

How's everything?

It's good.

Um, does Taylor like the new place?

Yeah, it's an adjustment, but she's getting used to it.

Okay.

I'm just a little bit worried because today the students drew pictures of their homes...

I thought you should see this.

My stomach just sank.

It was this horrifying vision of our house.

Everything was black and dead-looking, and in each of the windows was a black figure with orange eyes.

It was absolutely terrifying.

It was a nightmare.

Look, if there's anything I can help, or if you need to talk about it...

Okay. Yeah.

Just let me know.

Thank you. Thank you.

Take care.

You have a good day.

If this was her vision of our house, what was she seeing?

I was sitting in my car in my driveway...

And I just lost it.

It was like all the failure, in spite of all the effort, [tapping]

[Screams]

God.

Are you okay?

It startled me, and I realized that it was my neighbor.

How's everything going with the house?

[Sighs]

I said, "this is gonna sound crazy, but..."

I think our house is haunted.

And he did not seem surprised at all.

My family's been living near this house for a long time, and there's always been some kind of activity going on here.

He said, "you're not crazy."

That old place has quite a history.

Take care.

I realized that I needed to find out more about the house, and I was determined to find answers.

I thought the best thing I could do was to start at the town historical society.

I discovered a strange history about the town of Hinesburg.

Our house was where a church once stood.

I thought of the old stone wall in our house...

And I had to wonder, did these stones come from the church?

[Bell tolling]

Pray with me!

Our father!

The church belonged to a strange baptist sect led by a fire and brimstone preacher.

Come to me, all ye who labor with a heavy laden.

Their belief systems were pretty extreme.

These folks believed that the end of the world was imminent.

And the third part of the earth was burnt.

And the sinners would be engulfed in flames.

By the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths!

Someone from the town got pretty fed up with them and had set the whole area ablaze.

[Man screaming]

Could this all be, like, a curse from an angry preacher?

And he opened the bottomless pit.

The things we had seen, the clouds, the smoke, the thr*at of fire.

And from the smoke, locusts.

I thought of, like, a plague of locusts, but for us, it was bees.

He casts forth his iced fragments.

I felt a chill run down my spine as I thought about the chill in the house.

Their torment was like the torment as a scorpion strikes!

[Muffled screaming]

Amen!

All: Amen.

Maybe those lingering souls resented us.

Could that be it?

Did the congregation disapprove of me being a single parent?

Raise your hands!

And Vermonters on the West Side are being asked to stay safe on the roads tomorrow as showers and snow flurries are expected.

We didn't have any more money, but we had to get out of the house.

Temperatures may drop to below 41 degrees.

We heard on the radio that there was gonna be a big storm, and we thought, "okay."

We native Vermonters, we never thought that that was that big of a deal.

We were going to leave the next morning.

Where can we go, like, now?

Um...

Well, we don't have any money.

Mom's is the only place we can go.

Let's go see Mom.

We deal with storms all the time.

I wasn't overly concerned.

And boy, was I wrong.

[Wind whistling]

We woke up the next morning to a different world.

[Wind whistling]

Everything is coated in ice.

It was lethal.

It was apocalyptic.

[Gasps]

[Shivering]

It was a huge, huge storm, and it was clear to both of us we weren't going anywhere.

We could hear the wind howling and the relentless pelting of sleet.

It didn't stop.

It just kept building in intensity.

It was as though we finally decided, "we're gonna get out of here," and now we're absolutely stuck.

From the breath of God, ice is made.

We took all the blankets and decided we would just wait out the storm.

Where's the lights?

Candles.

I think there's some over here. Okay?

Shh.

I think the rest are in the dining room.

All right.

Auntie Kerrie will be right back, okay, baby?

Things didn't get better. They got worse at that point.

[Loud pop]

[Gasps]

[Whimpering]

Kerrie?

There was doors slamming.

[Scraping]

[Keys playing lightly]

There was piano keys playing.

[Whimpering]

It's as though the house knows they can't do anything.

They can't really go anywhere.

[Door slams]

[All gasp]

Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!

Shh. Shh.

Taylor was really frightened.

[Loud rattling]

Mom, make it stop.

[Crying]

Shh. Shh.

No!

Kristel, where are you going?

I heard footsteps in the hallway.

Kristel.

No!

Kristel, what are you doing?

When you have a child in the house, you have to hold it together and you have to at least appear to be strong for that child.

Mommy.

[Voice breaking] I had to do something.

I had to take some kind of action.

No!

Don't go.

No!

I walked down the hallway...

[Door slams]

And I heard whispers.

[Ethereal whispers]

And I saw a shadow on the wall.

[Door creaks open]

[Ethereal choir singing]

I knew what wanted to hurt us, and I'd seen it.

And just as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

And the room was suddenly still and quiet.

[Wind blowing]

I hadn't been asleep for very long when...

I felt the weight of something.

Kerrie?

It wasn't Kerrie.

Kerrie?

[Whispering] What's going on?

We could see dark shadows moving around.

[Ethereal choir singing]

Human shapes.

It was the congregation of that church.

They hated us, and they didn't want us there.

A figure walked past.

It looked like a preacher in the 1800s.

[Gasps]

I was just so scared.

[Screaming]

And then it was gone.

[Ragged breaths]

The storm finally passed.

We knew that for us, that was it.

Oh, wait. Go get... go get your backpack.

Go get your bag.

We made a plan to stay with our mother.

This place that was supposed to be the place where we would rest and heal literally tormented us from day one.

Kerrie.

Huh?

I forgot her elephant in the living room.

Oh.

Can you finish this?

I'm gonna run and go get it.

Yeah. Okay.

Thank you.

The preacher did everything possible to make sure that we didn't rest, and, certainly, there was no healing there.

[Wood creaking]

[Door slams]